The World Bank's “Education Strategy 2020”: A Personal Account

Abstract

This chapter recounts my involvement with one of the World Bank's consultations soliciting critical input into the draft of its Education Strategy 2020. Following a summary of the consultation that took place at the Brookings Institution, I reflect on the Bank's response to the input it received as well as to subsequent iterations of its education strategy. This chapter suggests how education has been narrowly conceptualized by the World Bank in past lending policies and how the Bank now conceptualizes it with regard to its intrinsic or external value to human and societal well-being. To elaborate upon these opening points, it will be pointed out how the language and circulating discourses of the World Bank, as well as those of other major international policy and funding actors, reflect and limit the vision of what the goals and purposes of an education system should be. In short, this chapter suggests that the language and discourses of the new World Bank Education Strategy 2020 (like previous World Bank education strategies) are narrowly framed in market and commercial terms focused on improving the competitive position of a country in the global economy, which does not maximize human development.

Citation

Arnove, R.F. (2012), "The World Bank's “Education Strategy 2020”: A Personal Account", Collins, C.S. and Wiseman, A.W. (Ed.) Education Strategy in the Developing World: Revising the World Bank's Education Policy (International Perspectives on Education and Society, Vol. 16), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 63-80. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-3679(2012)0000016008